Monday, May 23, 2011

Maybe They Shoulda Tried Helium Balloons


The good news is that UFOs weren't enlisted as the culprits intent upon harvesting The Chosen over the weekend. However, yep, even a broken watch gives us the correct time twice a day, but whether 6:00 p.m. or 6:00 a.m. last Saturday, there was no miraculous mass-ascension of souls at the supposedly appointed hour. My initial assumption regarding this sad state of affairs was that folks are just too darned fat now, and if it's becoming standard for overweight people to require two airline seats, how in the world can we expect them to be lifted up by a god of their choice? I doubt that even souls have escaped the weight problem.

But relax. Scientist Dr. Stephen Hawking says we're afraid of the dark and find comfort in religion, even though when the brain's "hard drive" goes south that will be that. No souls for Hawking, obviously. I wonder if he ever questions whether crows have a higher caw-ing?

I've always been suspicious of the pearls of wisdom we think God imparted, but that's primarily because His words passed from human to human, and we humans have a remarkable penchant for mixing truth with fiction, for writing accounts tailored to one's personal liking, and for hearing things in conversation never actually said. It's kinda like those TV commercials for sexual performance enhancement pills -- every time I saw them I was certain the drug pushers were referencing "a reptile dysfunction," and I simply couldn't understand what medical mysteries had befallen national lizards, and why their condition urgently necessitated magic perk-up pills. But then I figured out what was really being said, and realized that reptiles had nothing whatsoever to do with this silly human invention designed to prolong human fantasies prior to giving up the ghost, as it were, and ascending to That Place where so many souls were supposed to go last Saturday, except Judgement Day apparently went as limp and flaccid as a . . .well, it didn't happen.

On a similar note, I'm not at all sure The Faithful of the world had it right last weekend. Maybe religious historians called the wrong play, falsely interpreting ancient writings to warn of people being lifted up by The Rapture, when the real words warned that The Faithful would actually be carried away by The Raptors and eaten.

It's like that Osama bin Laden thing. He may well have gone on to enjoy 72 virgins after taking that final ocean dive with his freshly-ventilated head, but I have a pretty good feeling that all the afterlife virgins of his twisted faith are old male virgins. Joke's on you, dude.